While I agree Creationism isn't science, almost by definition (it doesn't use the Scientific Method [wikipedia.org]), I would hardly agree that evolutionism is a good scientific theory.
Good points. I don't believe in random genetic mutations being the basis of evolution for a second, and of course I don't believe that a God created organisms in all their myriad shapes and forms throughout the history of Earth.
There is something innate in all this, such as creatures that can change color to match the background, that seems to be there in the DNA to be used. But also there is learned instincts that are passed on as well. That is part of evolution, and it isn't random or a mutation.
I think the answer lies with how both physical and learned evolution is carried forward in the DNA, but I also think that evolution as described is non-sensical. The terminolgy is made fancier to hide the nonsense, but the parent's post points about what is required for evolution to be hard science is right on.
How ironic! This excellent parent post could be a description of the $170 million FBI case system failure that is the basis for this thread. That's pretty much the way it went, sans anything working at all.
Old case system was mainframe 3270, new system Oracle 91. I have followed this since Y2K days, this was started in 1999 and promised for July, 2000. The plug was finally pulled December 2004.
Work was done by a San Diego consulting form, not government techies who are inept or whatever as suggested in a previous post. Also bogus is that 9/11 changing requirements was source of failure as stated in articles. That's an excuse. System was supposed to be delivered more a year before 9/11.
In my opinion, Oracle app development with SQL against Oracle database is the basis of every large government failure I've read about. The systems I work on, AS/400 in RPG or mainframers working in COBOL, are the enterprise systems that have been working. My question is, why is Oracle assumed to be able to replace us when they fail over and over when the going gets rough?
Write this case system in RPG on the AS/400 with integrated AS/400 document imaging and every other technology needed for a case system, and we'll show you how large systems are supposed to work.
If I may ask, did you look at SQLite and, if so, what were the main reasons that led you to opt for BDB?
I did see SQLite in a list of open source databases, I believe. I am a longtime AS/400 RPG programmer and my focus was on record level access, not SQL.
BDB has the base architecture for what I want, and Derby being from IBM is worth taking a look at to modify to put in DB2/400 type record level access as well.
I have written business apps in SQL by accessing result sets with a cursor, but solid enterprise scale business logic requires writing as we do in RPG and COBOL, in my opinion, one record at a time with decision making each step of the way, rather than this pseudo batch stuff of SQL and a cursor.
I did see Oracle also has record level access, and I see Microsoft is adding it to their Unified Database Access layer above ODBC where they now have it only in Jet. They are also out to capture the enterprise market as well as Oracle.
SAP ABAP is I've read "German" COBOL and I'm sure they've got it right, but their open source database license was too pricey for me.
If open source wants to compete, we need to be able to write enterprise business apps as well. I of course will be offering back any mods I do to BDB and Derby for RPG record level access emulation.
After research last weekend I decided on BDB as well, but am also going to download Apache Derby version of Cloudscape as well if I want to use triggers and stored procedures for an app.
Actually, I agree that copyright alone should cover software and patents not be granted on software, period, but like I said above, it would have to be desired to be fixed first, and it isn't.
Excellent starting point in fixing the system if it was desired to be fixed. Problem is once a judge ruled that some obvious business method could be patented, I believe the patent office's attitude is now rubber stamp anything coming through the door, collect the large patent application fee, and let people figure it out in court.
I believe that even if the patent office was ptovided with the information in this thread prior to approval, they still would have rubberstamped it.
Either the system must be required to be fixed by legislation that would require a six month public review of a probationary awarding of a patent and the rubberstamper uses the peer community to make the decision rather than their own judgement,
or the "let the courts figure it out" needs to be replaced with a patent court that looks at the public comments in an initial judicial review and tries the patent protector against public record before allowing the suit to proceed against plaintiff.
Part of the guidelines of review needs to be that the obviousness of a method is not made non-obvious by a new technology. In other words, that which is done in person or by phone is not patentable because it is done over a network such as the internet.
Looking at people's phone number area code and mapping geographically is obvious to peopel. Looking at an IP address and doing teh sama should be just as obvious, and public comments that IP addresses are just a different identification of the obvious makes it obvious.
One of the tradeoffs that must be established is that suing to protect a patent means that the patent will be revoked if it is found to be obvious in the initial judicial review. The patent holder can then deal with patent office, paying all costs should the ruling ne upheld on appeal.
Finally, Integrated Development Environments are covered. While Carl and Michael focus on NetBeans, SunONE Studio Community Edition and Eclipse are also covered.
I finally got my first interview a year after being laid off, and that in another city. I interviewed for three hours and was told two weeks later through the recruiter that I was too experienced and they thought I would be bored. Instead, they hired someone younger and less experienced. My salary request had been set by the recruiter based on what the employer said they were paying for the position, a shade below average. That would have allowed me to continue my career and make a living programming and was fine with me.
I don't blame the employer. They were good people and that was unusually honest feedback. At 52 I have less years left than a younger person, and we programmers are all Sr. Programmer Analysts after four years or so anyway. The successful candidate was probably local although relocation costs weren't included or an issue, and local ties are hard to overcome as evidenced by the many locals only stipulation in ads.
I can still write my own personal software to be able to to continue creating as a programmer. I'll do something else that pays a much reduced rent instead of a mortgage, I have no idea what, but I'm undoubtedly becoming one of the statistics in this article. It is only a matter of increasingly lessening time before we are no longer able to pay other people to do our work anyway, which is as it should be. When we are no longer able to, it won't be pretty but we'll all have honest work again. Maybe even some programming.
This should have it's own topic. The FAA switched to Microsoft Server from Unix and has to reboot the friggin server or else it crashes along with the entire southwest air traffic system? Has Microsoft bribed so many people that they are now brainwashed into accepting that this is how computers work, or rather, don't work?
How many people can there be that could believe that the entire southwest air traffic control runs on a Windows server that "overloads with data"? Isn't this really called "running out of resources" in Bill Gates lala land?
This article is kind of interesting: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1370394,00.as p
In particular, read: 'In 1999, Borland and Microsoft settled the lawsuit in a private agreement. Microsoft made a $25 million investment in Borland, and the companies entered into a $100 million alliance through which Borland would license core Microsoft technology. Borland continues to license core Microsoft components, becoming the first and only licensee of.Net Framework last year.'
This is similar to Corel dropping both its Linux distribution and WP Office for Linux after Microsoft "invested" money in it and also to the way Linux is no longer a supported guest OS on Connectix. Microsoft is preventing competition by buying the influence needed to destroy promising Linux technologies before they come to fruition.
Did you see where MS (I used S instead of $ because some kiddies here freak out every time that's done) tried to destroy Borland by buying off the entire Delphi development team? The Delphi architect created C# for Gates. It's in the humongous list of software companies that MS destroyed, practically every PC software innovation that anybody ever came up with.
Adobe stands, Intuit was saved by DoJ, Google blew them off, otherwise all innovation will have to come in Linux.
I didn't say anything was wrong with open source, I said that's the only effect the article's suggestions would have on umemployment. And you've proven my point.
It is not my goal to place restrictions on investment or innovation; it is only to present a new way of thinking that some people may find stimulating.
Here's looking forward to some creative new thinking...
Write free software for individual industries
What the f***? How is that supposed to help reverse falling unemployment?
Slashdot - if you're going to post links to economics related subjects, can you please make sure it is written by someone with a clue about economics?
It isn't just you. I am amazed that someone that is supposed to be an editor or something would link to this. The premise should actually be "Some ideas for open source software". Presumably the programmers who take up this challenge would have to be unemployed to have any effect on unemployment, and only then after they complete these sci fi programs and give them away, with employment then consisting of any money coming from mods and service which may result (in other words, standard open source philosophy).
As far as I can tell,/. linked because it said open source. Maybe they don't actually read it? I know all the comments up to yours were from people who hadn't.
Yes, the human cost is terrible. I have lost work, and I empathize. However, what do you propose US businesses do?
I think you're right, and to a certain degree the free traders are right, in that even though we know that unregulated free trade will drive our living standards down the black hole of Calcutta, US businesses must be allowed to reduce costs and compete globally. I also like the ideas about requiring or tarriffing US businesses to equalize labor law advantages of third world countries, but it would be a maze of unworkable bureaucratic price fixing.
However, while businesses require the freedom to drive us into living in cardboard boxes, we as a people, which include business shareholders, have a stake in seeing that our taxdollars are spent in the US on American labor and goods. I think this is the right mixture of the economic philosophies of free trade and protectionism.
We should require that all government contract money be spent on American labor that pays federal and state payroll taxes, including subcontracting. While some products may be purchased from foreign sources, a percentage such as 65% of products purchased for government contracts should be required to be purchased from American companies meeting the requirements of all American labor including subcontracted work. For this, although H1-B's pay taxes and perhaps some might become US citizens someday, their use should be restricted from government contracts so that American labor is employed. If it creates a shrtage, then US businesses can employ H1-B's.
There is another important caveat here. The price of the government contract cannot be allowed to rise arbitrarily to whatever favored government contractors can gouge. In fact, the price should parallel prevailing US business prices to some degree, understanding that the requirement for American products will at times be much higher than imported goods. In fact, it will be the concept of a guaranteed government contract that will enable a US business to put together a business plan to manufacture a product that otherwise is not made in the US, putting Americans to work with our tax dollars in the process.
It is the subcontracting of labor where a new approach must be taken with this buy America requirement for government. A cost for labor approximating US business labor costs must be used, and contracts given to companies that do not bid higher than those costs. That means that the favored Washington contractors must be bypassed and work given to smaller companies who will bid the government goal if necessary. It's not the lowest bid of the favored, but the lowest bid of all American companies that will do the work that we seek here.
To the degree that free trade is sucking our wealth out of the country while big money sucks our tax dollars in huge gulps down the consulting drain, we as a people are between a rock and a hard place. It will require some effort to get politician's attention from raising campaign funds. While I'm at it, someone said we have to outlaw special interests, PACs , etc., and of course the current effort to reform campaign financing didn't look like it fared well in the Supreme Court. My own solution to campaign finance reform is that when media time is purchased for election advertising, the media company must give equal space in comparable time and presentation to opponents of the candidate or issue who meet some minimum threshold of legitimacy, such as 4% poll rankings used for the first California Recall debate.
This is the elegantly right way to go about reforming campaign financing. Instead of limiting speech, expand it. One issue that some will have with this is that media companies can't afford to sell one ad and give one or two others away for free. This is true, so the media company must price one ad for the cost of running two or three. This would seem to actually increase the need for money, but at the same time any ads bought by opponents gives one
The only surprise here is that it's been such a long time coming. An imperative now exists for *all* OSS officeware developers to get their data formats (e.g. XML) as transparent and portable as possible. Only a unified front of interoperable alternatives combined with sane evangelizing will give corporate IT departments a soft landing when they realize it's time to jump off this train.
And rather than wrap the XML with some binary rights protection layer that travels with the document, doesn't it make more sense to keep the open portable document on a server with copies in user directories and protect it with user access rights than to have excrypted copies traveling around with timeouts? You want to make sure that only so and so made changes to a document? Fine, only so and so has access rights to the file on your server, and so on. Sure, time outs are automatic, but scripts can remove the documents to a directory inaccessable to the users at a certain date and time as well. Same goes with logins for web services accessing those XML documents, etc.
I think it's cleaner and makes more sense since their scheme requires access to a server anyway. With the file server security approach, once accessed the portable document can be worked with in anyway the user desires and then checked back in. That of course is 180 degrees from Microsoft's proprietary desktop software perspective, and why the server security solution offers a better way to accomplish this with an open approach.
You must have missed that whole Software Assurance mess I was referring to. Companies were practically extorted to buy annual licensing that amounted to replacing Windows every three years, even if they didn't want to. This makes what they paid for is patches instead of a Windows upgrade. Software Assurance must be being rethought even as we speak.
I particularly liked her example of a UK company for whom, filing for patents is an excellent idea, lest a US multi-national will just steal the idea and patent it themselves...ahem prior art!
Yes, you're right, but I do see where an MEP would think it is easier for a constituent business to extract licensing fees from a patent than from a copyright. It's difficult for me to imagine the specific technical basis for this voice recognition patent different from all the other voice recognition patents granted. Saying that we can't parse though digitized sound and try to identify words because of some patent is insane.
Protection should be limited to keeping someone from ripping off copyrighted software by duplicating the effects of key algorithms. Of course, that will require reverse engineering to determine, so all that crap about no reverse enginering needs to be thrown out too.
Software patents look like they cost software development companies plenty to manage. I would suspect that they would cost the economy even more in lost innovation.
If so, Europe shouldn't introduce software patents as Europe would get a competitive advantage over the US.
Major european companies would still need to build a dossier of software patents by applying for software patents in the US. These would be needed for trading with US companies - "We will charge you $1 royalties on ours, if you charge us $1 for royalties on yours". Also they are needed for the threat of legal attack, as a protective shield against attack (patent or otherwise)!
I agree in the opportunity for a competitive advantage for Europe, especially now as the non-US becomes non-Microsoft. But I disagree with the prevailing wisdom of patenting to build up a war chest against other patents. It's just a matter of time before the insane patents that are given in software or vaporware or fantasy are ignored. Unless software functionality is being ripped off, which is covered by copyright, no non-US court should honor any suit brought by a US company with a patent. That will be the end of that.
by the way, the "need to redo the security in it" has been alluded to, but from the Jim Allchin interview I read the other day in ComputerWorld, Blaster and SoBig made a permanent change in Microsoft. I mean a serious change. I don't know what they're going to do, but it's going to be intense. They're wounded now and pissed off.
If I was an IT Manager, I wouldn't personally be happy that having signed up to a subscription programme, I was now being told that the three-year contract wouldn't cover the next upgrade of the Operating System.
Yes, that is why another delay is not just a joke and not trivial. Microsoft forced customers to do this against their better judgement, and now they find they paid for an upgrade but got patches. That can't be pretty.
tell the US they can take their idiot software patents and shove them where the sun don't shine. Because one dufus judge ruled that a business process could be patented, the Patent Office has rubber stamped anything that comes in the door. If I were Europe, I just simply wouldn't honor what monkeys with rubber stamps do.
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree Creationism isn't science, almost by definition (it doesn't use the Scientific Method [wikipedia.org]), I would hardly agree that evolutionism is a good scientific theory.
Good points. I don't believe in random genetic mutations being the basis of evolution for a second, and of course I don't believe that a God created organisms in all their myriad shapes and forms throughout the history of Earth.
There is something innate in all this, such as creatures that can change color to match the background, that seems to be there in the DNA to be used. But also there is learned instincts that are passed on as well. That is part of evolution, and it isn't random or a mutation.
I think the answer lies with how both physical and learned evolution is carried forward in the DNA, but I also think that evolution as described is non-sensical. The terminolgy is made fancier to hide the nonsense, but the parent's post points about what is required for evolution to be hard science is right on.
rd
Thanks for that insight on this project. You clearly are not that slow!
rd
The summary ignores that corporations are just as bad, but that corporations don't admit their problems. This is one area we find the Fed fessing up.
They had to. The FBI needed more money to continue but Grassley and Leahy were all over them. The happy talk had run out after five years.
rd
That should be Oracle 9i.
rd
How ironic! This excellent parent post could be a description of the $170 million FBI case system failure that is the basis for this thread. That's pretty much the way it went, sans anything working at all.
Old case system was mainframe 3270, new system Oracle 91. I have followed this since Y2K days, this was started in 1999 and promised for July, 2000. The plug was finally pulled December 2004.
Work was done by a San Diego consulting form, not government techies who are inept or whatever as suggested in a previous post. Also bogus is that 9/11 changing requirements was source of failure as stated in articles. That's an excuse. System was supposed to be delivered more a year before 9/11.
In my opinion, Oracle app development with SQL against Oracle database is the basis of every large government failure I've read about. The systems I work on, AS/400 in RPG or mainframers working in COBOL, are the enterprise systems that have been working. My question is, why is Oracle assumed to be able to replace us when they fail over and over when the going gets rough?
Write this case system in RPG on the AS/400 with integrated AS/400 document imaging and every other technology needed for a case system, and we'll show you how large systems are supposed to work.
rd
If I may ask, did you look at SQLite and, if so, what were the main reasons that led you to opt for BDB?
I did see SQLite in a list of open source databases, I believe. I am a longtime AS/400 RPG programmer and my focus was on record level access, not SQL.
BDB has the base architecture for what I want, and Derby being from IBM is worth taking a look at to modify to put in DB2/400 type record level access as well.
I have written business apps in SQL by accessing result sets with a cursor, but solid enterprise scale business logic requires writing as we do in RPG and COBOL, in my opinion, one record at a time with decision making each step of the way, rather than this pseudo batch stuff of SQL and a cursor.
I did see Oracle also has record level access, and I see Microsoft is adding it to their Unified Database Access layer above ODBC where they now have it only in Jet. They are also out to capture the enterprise market as well as Oracle.
SAP ABAP is I've read "German" COBOL and I'm sure they've got it right, but their open source database license was too pricey for me.
If open source wants to compete, we need to be able to write enterprise business apps as well. I of course will be offering back any mods I do to BDB and Derby for RPG record level access emulation.
regards,
rd
After research last weekend I decided on BDB as well, but am also going to download Apache Derby version of Cloudscape as well if I want to use triggers and stored procedures for an app.
rd
Actually, I agree that copyright alone should cover software and patents not be granted on software, period, but like I said above, it would have to be desired to be fixed first, and it isn't.
rd
Excellent starting point in fixing the system if it was desired to be fixed. Problem is once a judge ruled that some obvious business method could be patented, I believe the patent office's attitude is now rubber stamp anything coming through the door, collect the large patent application fee, and let people figure it out in court.
I believe that even if the patent office was ptovided with the information in this thread prior to approval, they still would have rubberstamped it.
Either the system must be required to be fixed by legislation that would require a six month public review of a probationary awarding of a patent and the rubberstamper uses the peer community to make the decision rather than their own judgement,
or the "let the courts figure it out" needs to be replaced with a patent court that looks at the public comments in an initial judicial review and tries the patent protector against public record before allowing the suit to proceed against plaintiff.
Part of the guidelines of review needs to be that the obviousness of a method is not made non-obvious by a new technology. In other words, that which is done in person or by phone is not patentable because it is done over a network such as the internet.
Looking at people's phone number area code and mapping geographically is obvious to peopel. Looking at an IP address and doing teh sama should be just as obvious, and public comments that IP addresses are just a different identification of the obvious makes it obvious.
One of the tradeoffs that must be established is that suing to protect a patent means that the patent will be revoked if it is found to be obvious in the initial judicial review. The patent holder can then deal with patent office, paying all costs should the ruling ne upheld on appeal.
That should stifle some of the blackmail.
rd
From the review:
Finally, Integrated Development Environments are covered. While Carl and Michael focus on NetBeans, SunONE Studio Community Edition and Eclipse are also covered.
rd
I finally got my first interview a year after being laid off, and that in another city. I interviewed for three hours and was told two weeks later through the recruiter that I was too experienced and they thought I would be bored. Instead, they hired someone younger and less experienced. My salary request had been set by the recruiter based on what the employer said they were paying for the position, a shade below average. That would have allowed me to continue my career and make a living programming and was fine with me.
I don't blame the employer. They were good people and that was unusually honest feedback. At 52 I have less years left than a younger person, and we programmers are all Sr. Programmer Analysts after four years or so anyway. The successful candidate was probably local although relocation costs weren't included or an issue, and local ties are hard to overcome as evidenced by the many locals only stipulation in ads.
I can still write my own personal software to be able to to continue creating as a programmer. I'll do something else that pays a much reduced rent instead of a mortgage, I have no idea what, but I'm undoubtedly becoming one of the statistics in this article. It is only a matter of increasingly lessening time before we are no longer able to pay other people to do our work anyway, which is as it should be. When we are no longer able to, it won't be pretty but we'll all have honest work again. Maybe even some programming.
rd
This should have it's own topic. The FAA switched to Microsoft Server from Unix and has to reboot the friggin server or else it crashes along with the entire southwest air traffic system? Has Microsoft bribed so many people that they are now brainwashed into accepting that this is how computers work, or rather, don't work?
How many people can there be that could believe that the entire southwest air traffic control runs on a Windows server that "overloads with data"? Isn't this really called "running out of resources" in Bill Gates lala land?
rd
This article is kind of interesting: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1370394,00.as p
.Net Framework last year.'
In particular, read: 'In 1999, Borland and Microsoft settled the lawsuit in a private agreement. Microsoft made a $25 million investment in Borland, and the companies entered into a $100 million alliance through which Borland would license core Microsoft technology. Borland continues to license core Microsoft components, becoming the first and only licensee of
This is similar to Corel dropping both its Linux distribution and WP Office for Linux after Microsoft "invested" money in it and also to the way Linux is no longer a supported guest OS on Connectix. Microsoft is preventing competition by buying the influence needed to destroy promising Linux technologies before they come to fruition.
Did you see where MS (I used S instead of $ because some kiddies here freak out every time that's done) tried to destroy Borland by buying off the entire Delphi development team? The Delphi architect created C# for Gates. It's in the humongous list of software companies that MS destroyed, practically every PC software innovation that anybody ever came up with.
Adobe stands, Intuit was saved by DoJ, Google blew them off, otherwise all innovation will have to come in Linux.
rd
I didn't say anything was wrong with open source, I said that's the only effect the article's suggestions would have on umemployment. And you've proven my point.
rd
It is just me, or is that article rubbish?
/. linked because it said open source. Maybe they don't actually read it? I know all the comments up to yours were from people who hadn't.
It is not my goal to place restrictions on investment or innovation; it is only to present a new way of thinking that some people may find stimulating.
Here's looking forward to some creative new thinking...
Write free software for individual industries
What the f***? How is that supposed to help reverse falling unemployment?
Slashdot - if you're going to post links to economics related subjects, can you please make sure it is written by someone with a clue about economics?
It isn't just you. I am amazed that someone that is supposed to be an editor or something would link to this. The premise should actually be "Some ideas for open source software". Presumably the programmers who take up this challenge would have to be unemployed to have any effect on unemployment, and only then after they complete these sci fi programs and give them away, with employment then consisting of any money coming from mods and service which may result (in other words, standard open source philosophy).
As far as I can tell,
rd
Yes, the human cost is terrible. I have lost work, and I empathize. However, what do you propose US businesses do?
I think you're right, and to a certain degree the free traders are right, in that even though we know that unregulated free trade will drive our living standards down the black hole of Calcutta, US businesses must be allowed to reduce costs and compete globally. I also like the ideas about requiring or tarriffing US businesses to equalize labor law advantages of third world countries, but it would be a maze of unworkable bureaucratic price fixing.
However, while businesses require the freedom to drive us into living in cardboard boxes, we as a people, which include business shareholders, have a stake in seeing that our taxdollars are spent in the US on American labor and goods. I think this is the right mixture of the economic philosophies of free trade and protectionism.
We should require that all government contract money be spent on American labor that pays federal and state payroll taxes, including subcontracting. While some products may be purchased from foreign sources, a percentage such as 65% of products purchased for government contracts should be required to be purchased from American companies meeting the requirements of all American labor including subcontracted work. For this, although H1-B's pay taxes and perhaps some might become US citizens someday, their use should be restricted from government contracts so that American labor is employed. If it creates a shrtage, then US businesses can employ H1-B's.
There is another important caveat here. The price of the government contract cannot be allowed to rise arbitrarily to whatever favored government contractors can gouge. In fact, the price should parallel prevailing US business prices to some degree, understanding that the requirement for American products will at times be much higher than imported goods. In fact, it will be the concept of a guaranteed government contract that will enable a US business to put together a business plan to manufacture a product that otherwise is not made in the US, putting Americans to work with our tax dollars in the process.
It is the subcontracting of labor where a new approach must be taken with this buy America requirement for government. A cost for labor approximating US business labor costs must be used, and contracts given to companies that do not bid higher than those costs. That means that the favored Washington contractors must be bypassed and work given to smaller companies who will bid the government goal if necessary. It's not the lowest bid of the favored, but the lowest bid of all American companies that will do the work that we seek here.
To the degree that free trade is sucking our wealth out of the country while big money sucks our tax dollars in huge gulps down the consulting drain, we as a people are between a rock and a hard place. It will require some effort to get politician's attention from raising campaign funds. While I'm at it, someone said we have to outlaw special interests, PACs , etc., and of course the current effort to reform campaign financing didn't look like it fared well in the Supreme Court. My own solution to campaign finance reform is that when media time is purchased for election advertising, the media company must give equal space in comparable time and presentation to opponents of the candidate or issue who meet some minimum threshold of legitimacy, such as 4% poll rankings used for the first California Recall debate.
This is the elegantly right way to go about reforming campaign financing. Instead of limiting speech, expand it. One issue that some will have with this is that media companies can't afford to sell one ad and give one or two others away for free. This is true, so the media company must price one ad for the cost of running two or three. This would seem to actually increase the need for money, but at the same time any ads bought by opponents gives one
The only surprise here is that it's been such a long time coming. An imperative now exists for *all* OSS officeware developers to get their data formats (e.g. XML) as transparent and portable as possible. Only a unified front of interoperable alternatives combined with sane evangelizing will give corporate IT departments a soft landing when they realize it's time to jump off this train.
And rather than wrap the XML with some binary rights protection layer that travels with the document, doesn't it make more sense to keep the open portable document on a server with copies in user directories and protect it with user access rights than to have excrypted copies traveling around with timeouts? You want to make sure that only so and so made changes to a document? Fine, only so and so has access rights to the file on your server, and so on. Sure, time outs are automatic, but scripts can remove the documents to a directory inaccessable to the users at a certain date and time as well. Same goes with logins for web services accessing those XML documents, etc.
I think it's cleaner and makes more sense since their scheme requires access to a server anyway. With the file server security approach, once accessed the portable document can be worked with in anyway the user desires and then checked back in. That of course is 180 degrees from Microsoft's proprietary desktop software perspective, and why the server security solution offers a better way to accomplish this with an open approach.
rd
You must have missed that whole Software Assurance mess I was referring to. Companies were practically extorted to buy annual licensing that amounted to replacing Windows every three years, even if they didn't want to. This makes what they paid for is patches instead of a Windows upgrade. Software Assurance must be being rethought even as we speak.
rd
I particularly liked her example of a UK company for whom, filing for patents is an excellent idea, lest a US multi-national will just steal the idea and patent it themselves...ahem prior art!
Yes, you're right, but I do see where an MEP would think it is easier for a constituent business to extract licensing fees from a patent than from a copyright. It's difficult for me to imagine the specific technical basis for this voice recognition patent different from all the other voice recognition patents granted. Saying that we can't parse though digitized sound and try to identify words because of some patent is insane.
Protection should be limited to keeping someone from ripping off copyrighted software by duplicating the effects of key algorithms. Of course, that will require reverse engineering to determine, so all that crap about no reverse enginering needs to be thrown out too.
rd
Software patents look like they cost software development companies plenty to manage. I would suspect that they would cost the economy even more in lost innovation.
If so, Europe shouldn't introduce software patents as Europe would get a competitive advantage over the US.
Major european companies would still need to build a dossier of software patents by applying for software patents in the US. These would be needed for trading with US companies - "We will charge you $1 royalties on ours, if you charge us $1 for royalties on yours". Also they are needed for the threat of legal attack, as a protective shield against attack (patent or otherwise)!
I agree in the opportunity for a competitive advantage for Europe, especially now as the non-US becomes non-Microsoft. But I disagree with the prevailing wisdom of patenting to build up a war chest against other patents. It's just a matter of time before the insane patents that are given in software or vaporware or fantasy are ignored. Unless software functionality is being ripped off, which is covered by copyright, no non-US court should honor any suit brought by a US company with a patent. That will be the end of that.
rd
by the way, the "need to redo the security in it" has been alluded to, but from the Jim Allchin interview I read the other day in ComputerWorld, Blaster and SoBig made a permanent change in Microsoft. I mean a serious change. I don't know what they're going to do, but it's going to be intense. They're wounded now and pissed off.
rd
If I was an IT Manager, I wouldn't personally be happy that having signed up to a subscription programme, I was now being told that the three-year contract wouldn't cover the next upgrade of the Operating System.
Yes, that is why another delay is not just a joke and not trivial. Microsoft forced customers to do this against their better judgement, and now they find they paid for an upgrade but got patches. That can't be pretty.
rd
Business-method patents are not the issue here.
They already told the US to shove it then. Good.
rd
tell the US they can take their idiot software patents and shove them where the sun don't shine. Because one dufus judge ruled that a business process could be patented, the Patent Office has rubber stamped anything that comes in the door. If I were Europe, I just simply wouldn't honor what monkeys with rubber stamps do.
rd
We also need a host of other "things" which make life bareable, even bring happiness.
:)
especially when it's bareable...
rd